The Hunt for Red October

I was reminded of the Hunt for Red October recently and I was puzzled about the whole Sean Connery thing. Let me get this straight, I like Sean. I personally think he was the best Bond ever (except for Octopussy). When he was Bond, he was suave and sophisticated. He could hold his martini in one hand, slap a woman and shoot a bad guy with the other and no one would bat an eyelid. Now he shaves his upper cheeks to control his beard.

But anyway, Sean had all of one accent. Some bastardised Scottish accent which never, ever changed in his entire hollywood career. Fair enough, when he's playing a super spy in service of the British government. But as a Russian Captain of a nuclear submarine who just happened to under the tutelage of a Scottish english teacher? (By the way, was Alan Quartermain a Scot?) Not bloody likely. Yet, for all the voice and accent coaching some of these hollywood stars get, they obviously don't have enough pizazz to pull off being anyone other than themselves. Otherwise, Connery couldn't be bothered learning and honing another accent in order to get into character. Can the man help it if studio execs pandered to him by either conveniently explaining his accent through some poor scriptwriting device or blatantly overlooked the fact that this fellow had quite a pronounced accent.

And speaking of hunting, I'm on the hunt for a new job. My current project is coming to an end and I don't want to head back to being a customer service manager so I am actively starting to look for work. I can tell that the way I approach it now is very different to the way I used to look for a job. In the past, I would procrastinate, circle jobs half-heartedly in the paper and lamely apply for work but for the most part my heart wouldn't be in it. I did not feel good enough/qualified enough/confident enough that I was the candidate for workplaces.

Born a shy child, self-confidence has always been an issue for me. I had an older sister and while at home, I generally read books and played with toys all by myself. I went to a Catholic primary school and there was a boys and a girls yard. Should any boy dare to cross the threshold, I remember them being forced to wear a girls dress and paraded about the boys yard (boy, I'd like to see that happen nowadays). Obviously, it was all about preservation - we were kept apart because the girls would drink and start fights. So I didn't get a lot of social interaction with the opposite sex. In fact, whenever there was a girl in the room I would either shut up or run into an adjoining room. High school was worse. There wasn't even a girls yard (it was all boys)!

So it wasn't until college where I was forced to interact with women and what a test of fire that was. Making friends was easy enough, but the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing was a foreign concept. So, I would take to meeting people on the internet. I remember spending countless hours on the whip and iscaa bulletin boards. I also met some really cool people from Princeton, so at the time I was a pioneer at meeting people over the internet and in real life before this whole blogging/vlogging phenomena. Yes, even back then we had contingency escape plans and made sure we were meeting in VERY public areas.

But it wasn't even then when I learned to like myself. I firstly had to get kicked out of my first university and return to study a year later before that would happen. Cue my next university, I was returning to study what I'd originally begun (Chemistry major) and I'd actually gone and joined social and sporting clubs. I was working at Starbucks, studying and playing tennis and squash 4-5 times a week, shed a lot of weight and was generally noticed by girls. This was the era of self-love (the act of loving oneself, not the self-gratifying kind). And while loving yourself doesn't involve or consist of being loved by others, the journey toward liking who I was started with the surprising fact that others liked me. So I can't be that bad, right? So there I was, popular (finally) and had girls after me and I did what any twenty-something would do, right? Wrong, it seems that my entire upbringing raised a perfect gentleman. But it did give me a brilliant opportunity to learn what I should've learned in high school and that is how to socialise normally. So I sometimes tell people that socially I'm about 5 - 10 years behind where I should be, but I'm a quick learner.

Nowadays, I am more confident and actively seek work which is within my skills set or something which my skills complement. And when in interviews, I can confidently answer and tell potential employers what I bring to the role. I am content with who I am and what I am capable of.

Unlike Sean, I'm not the master of applying one character/accent to multiple scenarios, but rather I'm really good at a lot of different accents but will master none. And you know, I'm okay with that.